I think the poker community sucks.. the majority of it, anyway. Everyone who plays live poker is an angle shooter... okay, not everyone, but you get the idea. Be careful who you deal with-- make sure everyone is vouched for or one person removed from your circle of poker friends. This was a completely unnecessary tangent, it has nothing to do with the rest of my blog post [1].

The people that are cool though, are really cool. They can also probably write better than me, because that was a brutal first sentence [2]. People who are actually good at poker are remarkably intelligent, objective, and good at (other) things. Successful poker players are often people who would have been successful in whatever they choose to do, they just happened to get lucky [3] to find poker. I was always smart in my own little world, my upbringing/schooling (lazy but talented) typifies [4] most successful poker players. I've spent about the last month grinding Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy! [5] What I've learned is that my mind has deteriorated more than I'd like to think it has-- I've forgotten state capitals, presidents, and a slew of US History/World Geography that I could have sworn I knew at one time. Oh well, it's still cool that other poker players are nearly as dorky as me.

Something else that's sweet about the poker community is that there's someone in every corner of the globe. If you want to travel somewhere, chances are there's someone on Leggo or 2+2 that lives there or has been there and can provide you with real life experience about the place. That is incredibly valuable and something that everyone should take advantage of. Next time someone says: "Stop by next time you're in Northern Europe!" ...you should just do it. [6]

Poker players, relatively speaking, have good taste. If you want to know what TV to watch [7] or obscure movie finds [8], chances are someone has a good recommendation. Definitely better recommendations than your high school friends, who almost certainly have terrible taste. The ability to be objective about media, food, books, vacation destinations, etc. is more prevalent in the poker community than outside of it, imo. I appreciate this, and I'd like to thank anyone that I've met through poker that has expanded my mind with a good recommendation.

Don't be afraid to actually use the poker community as a resource, we're all we've got.

[1] It definitely has at least a little bit to do with the rest of my blog post. I am using the first paragraph as a foil for the rest of the post.

[2] I've written worse.

[3] ...or unlucky.

[4] I'm almost positive this is a word. I'm slightly less confident that it's the proper usage.

[5] I got really unlucky, Jeopardy! is always written with an exclamation point, but here it looks like I'm much more excited about this turn of events than I really am.

[6] I've met so many tremendous hosts in the poker community.

[7] I'm so far behind on TV-- I'll be in the States next week to catch up on BE, SOA, Newsroom, Homeland... whatever else has started.

[8] There's a sweet thread in EDF on 2+2 about obscure movies. In fact, there are a LOT of great threads in EDF. Good signal to noise ratio.